Liberation Audio

Editor’s note: The following article was written by Walter Rodney for a 1971 issue of Maji Maji, the quarterly journal of the youth wing of the Tanganyika African National Union. The speech is held at the Robert W. Woodruff Library in Atlanta, Georgia, under the supervision of the Walter Rodney Foundation. The text here is from History is a Weapon with a few additional copyedits.

To most readers in this continent, starved of authentic information by the imperialist news agencies, the name of George Jackson is either unfamiliar or just a name. The powers that be in the United States put forward the official version that George Jackson was a dangerous criminal kept in maximum security in America’s toughest jails and still capable of killing a guard at Soledad Prison. They say that he himself was killed attempting escape this year in August. Official versions given by the United States of everything from the Bay of Pigs in Cuba to the Bay of Tonkin in Vietnam have the common characteristic of standing truth on its head. George Jackson was jailed ostensibly for stealing 70 dollars. He was given a sentence of one year to life because he was Black, and he was kept incarcerated for years under the most dehumanizing conditions because he discovered that Blackness need not be a badge of servility but rather could be a banner for uncompromising revolutionary struggle. He was murdered because he was doing too much to pass this attitude on to fellow prisoners. George Jackson was political prisoner and a Black freedom fighter. He died at the hands of the enemy.

Read the full article:

https://liberationschool.org/walter-rodney-on-george-jackson/

Ask any teacher in any setting, and they’ll tell you there’s no “formula” or “recipe” for education. Despite what corporate charter movements assert—like Teach for America’s “I do, you do, we do” rote learning—teaching is always dependent on relationships, trust, respect, and a host of other elements—and all of these can change day to day. Teaching on a Monday after a big fight broke out at a weekend party is different than teaching on a Wednesday when things have settled down a bit. Teaching in a pandemic is markedly different from teaching before one. These are just a few examples of the limitless and unpredictable forces that shape the educational experience.

As any communist organizer knows, Marxist pedagogy is not a matter of merely explaining or convincing, of coming up with the right wording, question, presentation, speech, or reading. These are educational tactics rather than pedagogies, which refer to specific ways, modes, or logics of education. Marxist pedagogy is contingent on a multitude of factors: the dominant political ideology at the time (is it intensely anti-communist or more open?), the consciousness of students as individuals or a collective (are they coming from a liberal issue-based organization or a strand of the movement?), the autonomy we’re allowed in particular settings (is it an after school club at a public/private school, community meeting, or a Party office?). And of course, there are other factors like different skills, personalities, time commitments, and relations between amongst teachers and students.

Read the full article here: https://liberationschool.org/marx-pedagogies-research-and-presentation/

The economic reality of the United States today is one of vast inequality in wealth and living standards. At present, 31.1 million households do not have enough food to eat in an average year. Housing within the means of average Americans is increasingly scarce, forcing people, including families, to live on the streets. Even for those who are insured, medical care involves ever-increasing costs for routine and critical care.

This suffering is not evenly distributed among the working class. Almost half of all Black children today grow up in poverty, compared to 15 percent of white children. The Indigenous nations that predated the United States, their land stolen and most of their population slaughtered, have had only small tracts of land returned to them, where incomes are markedly lower than the rest of the nation, and acquiring medical care and other basic needs is a struggle for many.

This is notable in itself, but it stands in stark contrast to the lifestyles of a privileged few. With the exception of the 2008 financial crisis, the country’s GDP has grown every single year for many decades. Worker productivity has skyrocketed, yet the value created did not accrue to working people suffering in intense poverty. So where has all that value gone?

Wealth accrued to a very small number of people in the United States while the many go without. Of the richest ten families on the planet today, half are U.S. citizens. Of the ten wealthiest individuals on the planet today, seven are U.S. citizens. The three people at the top of this list have a net worth as equal to that of the poorer 50% of the country combined.

The United States is only one among many nations in which this state of affairs can be seen: widespread, profound lack, among more than plenty concentrated in the hands of few. The situation replicates itself on a global scale as well: the pervasive lack of basic needs for the many in the United States stands in the shadow of an ever more pervasive lack of basic needs endured by workers in South America, Africa, or many parts of Asia. This is reflected in the fact that eight people alone hold as much wealth as the poorer 50% of the entire world combined.

The phenomenon of plenty for the few, and little for the many, is representative of an economic arrangement that spans nearly the entire globe. That economic arrangement is Capitalism.

Read the full article:

https://liberationschool.org/02-what-is-capitalism-html/

Illustration by:

Andrew Nance

This article is the third in a series of articles on the situation in Cuba recently written by Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad.

On July 22, US President Joe Biden and his Vice President Kamala Harris released a “fact sheet” on US “measures” against Cuba. The release from the White House said that Cuba was a “top priority for the Biden-Harris administration.” On March 9, Biden’s Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “A Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.” On July 12, NBC News reporter Kelly O’Donnell asked Psaki if Biden had reassessed his priorities regarding Cuba after the protests on the island the previous day. “In terms of where it ranks in a priority order,” Psaki replied, “I’m not in a position to offer that, but I can tell you that we will be closely engaged.”

Not a priority, closely engaged, top priority: matters have moved rapidly from March 9 to July 22. What moved the Biden-Harris administration to focus so quickly on Cuba? On the morning of July 11, some people in Cuba—notably in the town of San Antonio de los Baños—took to the streets to express their dissatisfaction with the social and economic problems created by the US-imposed blockade and by the global pandemic. The reaction to these events in Havana and in Washington, D.C., is instructive: Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel heard the news of the protests, got into a car, and drove the 40 miles to San Antonio de los Baños, where he met with the people; while in Washington, Biden used the protest to call for the overthrow of the Cuban government. US government-funded nongovernmental organizations and Cuban American groups hastened to take advantage of the frenzy, excited by the possibility of regime change in Cuba.

On the evening of July 11, tens of thousands of Cubans rallied across Cuba to defend their revolutionary process. Since that Sunday evening, Cuba has been calm.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/let-cuba-live-the-movement-standing-up-to-bidens-maximum-pressure-campaign/

To the surprise of many, the Republic of Cuba finished the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games with 15 medals. Their seven gold, three silver and five bronze medals place them 14th in the world. This is remarkable given the impact of the U.S.-imposed blockade and the size of Cuba’s population.

Of the countries that won more medals than Cuba, only New Zealand has a smaller population. Cuba ranked second in Latin America behind Brazil, which has a population of 211 million compared to Cuba’s 11.33 million.

Cuban athletes won a medal for about every 755,333 people in Cuba. The United States, with 113 medals total, received one medal for about every 2,904,425 people in the United States.

Read the full article:

https://www.liberationnews.org/cubas-big-wins-at-olympics-due-to-its-revolution/

In this presentation, a PSL member outlines the Party's position on the upcoming Governor recall election in California.

We explain why we should vote against this undemocratic right-wing power grab, expound on the reactionary policies of frontrunner Larry Elder, and why voting NO on the recall is better for the working class, even though we do not support Gavin Newsom or his policies.

Read a party statement here:

https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-on-california-recall-election/

The unopposed entrance of Taliban forces into Kabul marks the bitter conclusion of a 20-year year military adventure by U.S. imperialism that senselessly inflicted death and suffering on an enormous scale. The fact that the U.S.-backed Afghan government surrendered without a fight is the clearest indication that it was nothing more than an extension of U.S. imperialist power. The stark reality showed itself: either the U.S. imperialist occupation that began 20 years ago would be sustained literally forever, or this government would collapse upon the exit of U.S. military forces. The Taliban coming to power in the mid-1990s was the consequence of the CIA war against the socialist government of Afghanistan that had come to power in 1978 during the Saur Revolution. The U.S. was perfectly willing to do business with the Taliban prior to September 11 in spite of their odious policies including their prohibition on the education of girls. The hope and promise of the earlier socialist period was crushed by U.S. intervention and the later collapse of the Soviet Union. Since then, the people of Afghanistan have lived under one reactionary government after another.

The complete and almost instantaneous military and political collapse of the Afghan government has led to a situation where the Taliban is presiding over the panicked evacuation of its opponents from inside the capital city. Since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, hundreds of thousands of Afghans died, millions were forced to flee their homes, tens of thousands of working class enlisted soldiers from the United States were killed or injured — and in the end the political situation in the country is returning to a situation where the Taliban dominates the country.

Read the full statement:

https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-statement-u-s-backed-afghan-government-surrenders-to-the-taliban/

Approximately 400 years ago, in August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States for the first time. The centuries since have seen the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in human history. Yet where there is oppression, there is also resistance. Since 1619, Black radicals and revolutionaries have taken bold collective action in pursuit of their freedom, threatening the fragile foundations of exploitation upon which the United States is built. These heroic struggles have won tremendous victories, but they have also produced martyrs—heroes who have been imprisoned and killed because of their efforts to transform society.

“Black August” is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons, and to emphasize the continued importance of the Black Liberation struggle. Observers of Black August commit to higher levels of discipline throughout the month. This can include fasting from food and drink, frequent physical exercise and political study, and engagement in political struggle. In short, the principles of Black August are: “study, fast, train, fight.”

Read the full article here: https://liberationschool.org/study-fast-train-fight-the-roots-of-black-august/

Editor's note:

Central to our ideology is the idea that in order to understand and prepare for the class struggle in the U.S. we must first take the global situation into account, understanding that the interconnectedness of global and national politics is primary and dialectical, constantly changing and bursting with contradictions. In this document we assert this thesis and undertake an examination of the global class struggle as it has ebbed and flowed from 1945 until the present. We look at the upsurge of socialist and national liberation struggles from 1945-1979 and their impact on the class struggle in all countries, before turning to the era of counterrevolution that we find ourselves in today. We conclude with a few remarks on moving from counterrevolution to revival, which we believe are particularly important given the election of Donald Trump.

The following was initially written as an internal document to facilitate discussion within our party as we headed into our 2nd Party Congress in 2013. As such, it does not account for the changes in the global situation that have taken place since then. The historical arguments and the general theses put forward, however, regarding the primacy of the international situation, the periodization of the global class struggle, and the relationship between global and national politics still hold.

When Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848 they and the other young revolutionaries in Europe (Marx was 29 and Engels was 27) believed that continental Europe was on the verge of revolution. The revolution would of necessity be directed against the monarchist regimes of the old ruling classes. They anticipated that both the proletariat and the liberal bourgeois democratic forces would be in the streets and at the barricades. They were not wrong.

Our first class starts by examining various definitions of fascism in order to foreground how it has functioned historically as a concept-in-class-struggle, while also emphasizing the importance of a dialectical approach. This will allow us to situate fascism within the deep history of capitalism and its imperialist expansion. We then analyze how the Italian fascists and the Nazis rose to power within the constitutional parameters of bourgeois democracy--by receiving abundant funding from big industrial domestic and international capital--to run populist electoral campaigns and whip up certain sectors of the population around an ultra-nationalist and colonial program. Since every capitalist country had fascist movements in the wake of the Great Depression, we also examine what happened to these movements in the cases when they fully consolidated state power. Finally, we discuss how an internationalist, materialist perspective can help us make sense of the capitalist ruling class’s decisions to favor hegemony or repression in specific instances, and what this concretely means for fascist political practices and their visibility as such.

Course materials:

Daniel Guérin, Fascism and big business

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/guerin/1938/10/fascism.htm

José Carlos Mariátegui, “Biologia del fascismo”

https://www.marxists.org/espanol/mariateg/1925/escena/01.htm

Aimé Césaire, Discourse on colonialism, trans. J. Pinkham (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2007), 35-46.